Every election these days is called ‘the internet election’, and not surprisingly since each election brings new innovations in social media. Howard Dean did really well out of e-campaigning in 2004, although he was probably less enthusiastic about it once ‘the scream’ appeared all over YouTube. MyBarackObama.com was a cracking success, expanding into a SMS programs, 2,000 YouTube flicks, 3 million online donors, 5 million ‘friends’ across Facebook and other social sites. In Australia, Labor claims a lot of its success is due to marshalling support through digital, and the Coalition admits they didn’t make the best use of it, falling before the bold and youthful Kevin07 brand.
There’s one month of furious electioneering to go in the UK before folks head to the polls, and we’ll see how the parties make best use of digital and social in particular in these next few weeks. Already, my Facebook news feed has changed. Status updates allow everyone you know to see your opinions, comment, and get notifications of others’ comments. It wasn’t that long ago that these were about X Factor, but political conversations are taking their place – people are linking to opinion pieces on the economy and social policies, and the same political discourse is all over twitter too.
But what I’ve found most interesting is how user-generated content has already made a big splash. Following the launch of (Conservative leader) David Cameron’s much mocked airbrushed billboard campaign, Tory-bashers are giving those ads an amusing PhotoShop once-over at mydavidcameron.com.
Labour had an official crowd-sourcing poster competition won by a 24 year old’s entry depicting ‘Nice Dave’ sitting on a 1983 Audi Quattro (below), recalling a character from recent BBC drama Ashes to Ashes in which a police officer inexplicably wakes up in 1981.
The ad was launched last Saturday by Labour’s agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, but immediately repurposed by Euro RSCG (the Tories’ ad agency) to great effect (more on this here).
Clearly crowd-sourcing hasn’t paid off in this example (more of an own goal really), but I’m looking forward to more UGC in the coming weeks.
You’ve probably seen the billboards and bus ads by now, but in case you weren’t aware, we recently launched the digital side of Pepsi’s new Hit Refresh campaign. MTV are pushing it on television, we’re running it here on the ‘net.
It’s pretty cool, a mash-up of Pepsi re-inventing their image and placing a huge focus on digital marketing the combination of which turned into a Twitter based scavenger hunt, with the prizes coming in the form of cold hard cash. Well, not cash so much as 101 slick little EFTPOS cards loaded up with $250 each.
A brief run down: the refreshment company activation team (known as Pepsi Refreshers) make their way out into the world, choose an obscure location in a well populated Australian city, and then start tweeting out clues about where they are from the Pepsi Australia Twitter page. We’ve rigged it so that game playing, money lusting, Pepsi fans can also catch these updates on the Facebook Page, or at the Hit Refresh site, in order to more effectively race each other to the prize.
This is excellent because the entire thing can essentially be run from a smartphone, an easy thing for a Pepsi Refresher to have on them at all times. Plus, the players themselves aren’t tied into any particular service in order to keep up with the clues. It’s infectious, interactive, and incredibly efficient – social media at its best, really.
Creative mastermind Toby Caves really took advantage of the fact that APIs and widgets basically rule the internet now, and the main campaign site grew into a deliciously crafted overview of everything that’s happened, and is happening in the competition at any given time.
The latest clues are fed in from the Twitter page, Facebook fans are prominently displayed, a schedule and Google powered map let people know which cities the Refreshers are going to pop up in next and the Winners Gallery shows off all those lucky sods with their fancy new free money cards. It’s all ruled over by an explanatory Flash header, and coated in a vibrant blue that only exists between shades of Pepsi and Twitter.
Speaking of those cards, we feel like they’re a bit of a win. Based on the global Refresh campaign posters and candy colour palette, they are a bit more recognisable and fun than straight up cash in your hand while still being just as usable.
Stamped with the new Pepsi globe logo, we’ve also slapped some helpful thematic suggestions for spending the well won dollars. Things like style, scene, and so on – after all, if you win a prize you shouldn’t be using it to pay your bills (unless you really need to, then it’s ok). As a general rule though, prizes are fun, should be used for fun, should be spent on your self, and we wanted to encourage that.
We wanted the prize cards to be like the campaign, simple, effective, fun and it feels like we nailed it.
No, it’s not modest or polite to rave on about oneself, but this is a pretty exciting project for us, and the response so far has been amazing, so we thought we’d throw out a few more details and see what you all think.
Check out the campaign, hit us up in the comments and let us know.
The crew at environmental Graffiti have gathers a bunch of ads that come from environmental groups and promote awareness and action for change.
It’s awesome to see agencies embracing campaigns that have no other agenda than creating awareness and hoping to affect some social change and responsibility.
Well, at least when we’re talking about ad size. Over the past months most of our entire industry have been playing around with ad sizes on homepages everywhere, from Yahoo to MSN and AOL.
This quick article on Compete.com gives us a little interesting insight into how users and prospective customers actually behave when presented with the same ad in different sizes.
I wont give the big secret away, but you might be surprised at the outcomes of some of the tests that were done, I definitely was.
Hulu’s super fast rise to 2nd place in the online video market has forced the Google owned Youtube into coming up with actual strategies to make some money. Funny, I’d have thought it would be common sense that brought this on…
So, a few numbers: 100 Million – Estimated times Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent video has been watched. 0 – the amount of dollars made from those impressions.
I think those numbers are enough for now…
Google has stepped up actions to try and make some serious money from the worlds number one video site by ‘setting up partnerships with big media companies that would help it generate more advertising dollars from the millions of videos hosted on YouTube.’
Partnerships with Sony Pictures, CBS, Lions Gate and others are set to provide movie trailers, TV shows and music video content to the site in a bid to make it more attractive for advertisers. As it stands marketers are reluctant to advertise due to the unpredictable and often inappropriate content uploaded by Youtube’s users.
As it stands, ads only show up on between 3% – 9% of the sites’ videos. – eMarketer
To catch up with Hulu, Youtube’s gong to need to supply users with a lot of partner content that they’ll actually want to watch. Is this going to have the same repercussions for overseas users as it Hulu does? And if so, how do we get around this? Surely Youtube’s customer base stretches far and above the USA, yet how to US only partnerships benefit this international userbase?
I have a lot of questions about this, and as we see, so do Google who’re doing anything they can to get out of their massive $471 Million deficit every year.
This handy Businessweek article (which prompted me to write) has some of the answers but also provokes a lot of other questions about the model which has yet to be tried and tested.
Pretty amazing creative from Ogilvy & Mather, France, using animation from Wizz. Nice work and pretty eye opening when attached to, of all things… Scrabble.
In the latest in the great flashmobs being put together by T-Mobile, people were asked to show up to Trafalgar Square at 6pm on April 30th. Some were expecting dance lessons, but instead they got microphones before joining a massive sing-a-long to the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Pink makes a subtle appearance (a brand’s gotta get what it paid for, after all), but all in all it’s more feel-good than down-your-throat advertising. Love it.
How’s this sound to you: a six-month, $AUD150K contract to live on Hamilton Island and vlog your experience?
I know how it sounds to me: absolutely miserable. That’s because I don’t like beaches, sunshine, or scuba diving or, you know, paradise. Ask anyone here — I’m a generally miserable person.
All kidding aside, though, this is a really great campaign by Tourism Queensland. Pushed out through Twitter and a very pretty banner campaign, The Best Job In The World has already been picked up by mainstream media all over the world.The job requirements are pretty simple: as Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, you get to experience all the GBR has to offer, collect the mail on occasion (via seaplane, of course) and report back to Australia and the world via blog and video.
At the site you can view the latest applicants for the job, get the low-down on the area if you’re unfamiliar and lose yourself in restless abandon whilst pondering exactly what the hell you’re still doing sitting in a cubicle…until you realise what you should be uploading your application for this position.
(For our overseas readers, it’s open to you guys, too — just need to meet the T&C listed on the website.)
Edited to add: my friends in NYC are having a ball with this on Tumblr. Let’s remind them that it’s 72 degrees and sunny here today.
This was sent to me on email this morning and I find it quite unbelievable. The image below captures one of the biggest Raiders celebration moments …
Pity this was for a Panthers ad campaign. WTF? How is it possible this made it through the ad agency and through management at Panthers without getting picked up? Its just dumbfounding. Full article in the link below.
If you can think of any ad campaigns that top this on the fail scale, I’d love to hear them.
Amnesia Razorfish is a digital marketing agency headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It is the Australian arm of Razorfish, one of the largest digital agencies in the world.
We live and breathe digital and provide a range of services from strategy, media, creative, tech, social media, analytics and more.
